1. Field of the Invention:
This invention relates to an apparatus for sampling a clarified test solution from a suspension containing insolubles such as soilds, microorganisms and so on.
It is very important, especially in the fermentation industries, to determine such conditions as concentration of substrate, pH, composition and the like, of microbial metabolites in culture liquid in order to operate microbial metabolic reaction efficiently and to control the reaction from outside of the system.
Thus, it is very contributive to the industries to the sample automatically a clarified test solution from culture broth in order to determine above mentioned conditions.
2. Description of the Prior Technics:
Culture broth is usually a suspension which contain microbial cells and other suspending solids. Therefore, the culture broth as it is can not be used as a test solution for a gas or a liquid chromatography. So far a certain amount of culture broth has been separated therefrom, and filtered or centrifuged to obtain a clarified solution which is then used as a test solution in chromatographies. However, such solid-liquid separation process has the following disadvantages; during the process, there are possible changes in composition of the test solution (for example, as in an alcoholic fermentation) and there is a time lag between preparation of the clarified sample and determination thereof, as a result, actual concentration, pH and composition of the culture broth at a certain time may differ from those obtained by subsequent determination.
Under such circumstances, there is a technical need in the fermentation industries which enable us to remove insolubles contained in suspension and to sample the clarified solution thus obtained. If such apparatus is realized, it may be combined with many kinds of auto-analyzers and it will fortify an on-line automatic monitoring systems.
The inventors of this invention have conducted studies about such autosampler and achieved the present invention.